scorpion's post above is interesting for a number of reasons. It breaks into two parts. First,
Quote: (04-12-2014 12:06 AM)scorpion Wrote:
The Late Show (Letterman) and the Tonight Show (Leno, now Fallon) aren't really intended to be laugh out loud funny all the time. They're more about having a host who is likeable enough that people want to invite him into their homes every night and watch him as they fall asleep. A lot of people get very attached to those shows in particular and watch them regularly for years. The host becomes like an old friend in the eyes of the regular viewer. It's just as important to be charming and a good conversationalist with guests as it is to be funny.
This is the major reason that Conan didn't work out as host of the Tonight Show. NBC felt his style was too goofy/funny and lacked charm/gravitas. Fallon is a much better fit in that regard. Although he rarely hits Conan's comedic high notes, he's got a much wider range. And most of all he just comes across as an extremely likeable guy. CBS is hoping Colbert will fill a similar role.
These two shows (the Tonight Show especially) are peculiar American institutions, so I'm not surprised that foreigners really wouldn't "get" them, especially if you're looking at them purely as a comedy show, because they definitely aren't that. They're about just chilling out with a likeable guy on your TV as you fall asleep while he cracks a few jokes about current events, interviews celebrities and otherwise entertains you.
This is a very good, concise explanation of the American institution of the late show.
Quote: (04-12-2014 12:06 AM)scorpion Wrote:
As American culture has become increasingly atomized and people more isolated, the late night host has become a sort of pseudo-friend to people. You just turn him on and say hello every night, and he's always smiling and laughing with some interesting company to talk with. And for an hour or so, you feel less alone.
These few lines are extremely revealing.
I think most people would not see the connection between what is written here and scorpion's relentless posts about the white race and the perceived dangers to it from all the usual suspects. Yet they are connected in the most direct possible way.
The pervasive feeling that life has become "increasingly atomized" and the fear of being all alone in what they see as an "empty" and "meaningless" world devoid of purpose or direction is what drives intelligent, literary men to fetishize ideas of race and nationality in a desperate attempt to safeguard a "traditional" past that they look to for shelter and relief from the
sound and fury, signifying nothing which they feel is the face of the present and even more so of the future.
These fears are shared by virtually all intelligent contemporary men and transcend superficial differences in ideology. The traditionalist right and the progressive left are much closer to each other than they realize; whether they pine for Gaia and the myth of "the environment" or for a restoration of "white patriarchy", these quasi-religious impulses are driven by the same sense of corruption and a state of sin that human beings have fallen into (whether against "traditional morality" or against "Mother Earth") and that has to cleansed and purified by an all-consuming fire so that we can return to a longed-for state of simplicity and purity.
I feel for these guys, both right and left, who are so consumed by fear and despair, and who
lose the world as a result. I wish I had the power to show them that they're wrong; there is no need to fear the future and turn away from the present. As the human being makes progress in controlling and manipulating the materials that surround us, the interfaces between us and the physical environment change and evolve. Yet the direction of this change is not what people think it is.
It is not new technology that mechanizes and alienates us -- it is we that, over time, humanize and transform it.
Human sentience, because it is different from and superior to mere materials, is the thing that insinuates itself into everything it touches -- not the other way around. It is not our destiny to be subsumed in a cold world of "impersonal" technology because all of this technology is, after all,
our own creation -- and it is our way of imbuing every aspect of the world around us with our own warmth.
Look at a forum such as this one, and understand the swiftness with which human beings have taken an unthinkable new invention -- the internet -- and turned it into another way to find friendship, camaraderie, humor, and connection.
People bemoan the way Amazon, for example, has displaced some mom-and-pop retail stores. Yet they miss the fact that surfing the immense and stupendous spaces of the Amazon website can be an experience of equal or greater warmth, charm, and complexity as walking through any physical stores. It's just that with the pace of our advances accelerating, it can be hard to understand that each and every new interface offers endless possibilities of a densely lived human experience, and requites just a little patience and attention -- and so people give up and turn away, never giving the world as it is the chance that it deserves. What a waste.
